


Dance of minds

by Melody_Jade



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-13 20:53:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7985785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melody_Jade/pseuds/Melody_Jade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuna never thought she would actually see a Kaiju.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dance of minds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phidari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phidari/gifts).



 

* * *

 

Yuna never thought she would actually see a Kaiju. Sure, there were sightings of them all over the world, thousands of photos and video footage taken of them and the wide-spread death and destruction they left in their wake, some attacks even happening close to home. But Yuna honestly never thought it would happen to her.

Life went on despite the existence of the Kaijus, and in young Yuna’s mind, there were other more pressing matters. She would learn later how wrong she was, but at that time, all she thought about was schoolwork, hanging out with her friends, and her fencing training.

Yuna had learnt fencing since she was young, quickly falling in love with the sport and continuing all through school. Her coaches had quickly recognized her talent and nurtured it, giving her more and more advanced training, and sending her to youth competitions all over the country where Yuna had collected medals and accolades.

Yuna was identified as an Olympic hopeful, and so it was that she traveled to this place, right next to the sea, for the final Olympic selection rounds.

It was the last match of the day, and the winner of this round would get to take the last slot on the Olympic team. Across from Yuna on the fencing arena was Pang So-Yi, whom Yuna had sparred against many times before in previous fencing competitions.

The first time they faced each other, Yuna had lost after a long, drawn-out match. Afterward, she had watched So-Yi as she advanced through the subsequent rounds, and again in other competitions, studying her style and techniques, learning her weaknesses.

Yuna won the next time they met on the arena again.

Ever since then they had met many times on the competitions circuit, winning as many times as losing, neither of them holding the upper hand for long.

Yuna never stopped watching So-Yi.

She told herself that it was to keep herself familiar with So-Yi’s fighting style, to take note of any changes in her techniques and adjust her own style accordingly. But she also noticed other things about So-Yi. She noticed how So-Yi was always cheerful and how much a smile lit up her face.

This match for the Olympic spot was to be their most crucial match ever.

They faced each other across the arena and the match began. By now, they were familiar with each other’s style and techniques, and they lunged and parried in turn, their movements fast and elegant, each of them anticipating the other’s strikes. Immersed in their match and in each other, both of them were barely aware of their fellow fencers watching them, or the judges assessing their every movement. They were lost in a dance only they knew the moves of.

And then the sirens went off, sirens that Yuna never thought she would hear.

* * *

Instincts that were ingrained by the monthly evacuation drills took over, and Yuna dropped everything and ran out of the arena, which was right by the waterfront, to the nearest underground bunker together with everyone else, a mad scramble toward the exit.

It was only when they were clear of the arena that Yuna realized that So-Yi, who had been right beside her when the sirens first rang, had disappeared. She slowed down, craning her head around, desperately searching for a glimpse of So-Yi in the mass of people surrounding her but to no avail.

“Where’s So-Yi,” she asked her friends. She received no answer at first, no one had even heard her, too busy running for their lives, and she repeated her question again, louder this time, fighting the growing panic and not understanding why she felt that way.

She kept asking, and eventually someone said, “I think I saw her slip and fall down in the arena just now, but she must have gotten up and kept going… She must have.”

Even in hindsight, Yuna would never be able to explain why she did what she did next. She tore away from the panicked huddle her friends were in, dashing back in the direction toward the arena despite alarmed calls from her friends, fighting against the tide of people going the opposite way toward safety.

Everyone would ask her the same question afterward, “Why did you turn back?” Her family, her friends, reporters, even strangers on the street, even So-Yi herself. The truth was, Yuna didn’t know why herself. She just knew that So-Yi might still be in the arena, might need help getting out, and deep down, despite all the rivalry that existed between them, she and So-Yi were connected.

They had spent years watching and studying each other, and there was no one else in their age group that Yuna knew better, and vice versa.

Yuna could not leave So-Yi alone in the arena to meet death.

She ran back to the arena, already mostly empty except for a lone figure lying unconscious on the floor. She ran to So-Yi, the sirens a constant cacophony in her ears, and with all her strength dragged So-Yi closer to the side, near a haphazardly stacked set of boxes and crates that would hopefully provide some cover.

The sirens stopped, and reverberations traveled through the ground as the Kaiju made landfall. For the first time in her life, alone except for her unconscious rival, barely hidden behind a stack of boxes, Yuna saw a Kaiju.

The remainder of the night was a blur of adrenaline and fear, a constant struggle for survival. So-Yi woke up not long after the Kaiju made landfall, and together, they used all available resources to stay hidden and out of the Kaiju’s path of destruction. When they could not stay hidden anymore, they ran, and kept running, together, until military forces finally arrived and confronted the Kaiju.

* * *

Everything changed after that night.

The Kaijus and the threat they posed became real to Yuna. They were no longer just an image on the television screen, or a report on the newspapers. Kaijus now walked both in the waking world that Yuna inhabited and in her nightmares as she slept.

An innocence was lost, that night.

Something else was gained, though. Throughout that long night of survival, Yuna and So-Yi only had each other to depend on, and in that shared adversity a friendship was born, a friendship that quickly grew into love.

When the call came out to recruit for new Jaeger pilots, there was no hesitation in their minds when they put down their names on the sign-up sheet. They had faced their first Kaiju and survived, now they would face other Kaijus and triumph.

And they knew, absolutely without a doubt, without even having to ask each other, that they would be piloting the same Jaegar, that they would be drifting together.

Drifting was a different sort of dance from their fencing matches, and just as exhilarating, if not more. Yuna’s aggressive style and So-Yi’s calculated and precise movements melted into a style unique to them, and they moved together as one as they anticipated their enemies’ movements, and reacted accordingly.

There was no need to anticipate each other’s movements, they were of one mind.

* * *

 

 


End file.
